Wine and Golf Tour of Italy: An Escape to Vineyards & Fairways

Thanks for helping me organize my family (of 10 with diverse age from 15 to 63) trip to Italy, from Dec 17 to Dec 31. Whilst different member of my family have different expectation and requirement, I would like to comment you and your team on having planned an excellent trip that not only met each and everyone's interest and expectation but truly exceeded it.

Your planning have brought us to the lovely cities of Parma, Modena, Florence, Orvieto, Civita Di Bagnoregio, Naples, Rome, Venice, Cortina d'Amprezzo and back to our starting point Milan. Throughout the trip, we have a well balance itinerary that covered

- beautiful churches such as the Duomo in Milan, Rome, Florence,

- archeological site like Pompeii, Colosseum, Roman Forum, Pantheon, Pisa, Verona (learning more about romeo and Juliet)

- great local eating places (recommended by the guides you chose)

- lovely country side and unique sight in San Gimignano, Civita Di Bagnoregio, Orvieto, Lake Como,

- great gallery likes Uffizi, Academia

- Interesting activity such as Snow Mobile excursion in Cortina, Learning Cooking 

- Shopping activities

With so much, yet your team immaculate planning never have us rushing from sight to sight, we were both able to enjoy and learn as much as we can of each sight and at times added more activities.

The team of guides you chose, have truly turn stone and history into exciting stories that the provided the group deeper understanding of the sights we visited and saw. Really like to thank each on of them like our guides in Florence, Pisa, San Gimignano, Orvieto and Civita Di Bagnoregio, Naples and Pompeii, Rome, Verona, Venice and Milan.

But most importantly, thank you for getting our driver, he truly ensure our comfort whilst driving steadily through jams on our way to Naple and snow storm on our way to Cortina d Amprezzo and also took very good care of us ensuring we know what to do where we have no guides and leaving us clear instruction when we needed help. He is truly a wonder.

I will definitely tell my friends heading to Italy about this company.... A wonderfully great experience.

This was a customized trip for my wife and me from April 6 to 20 at $16,000 per person.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable trip. We would give it four out of five stars.

The hotels were excellent, including their locations, as were the guides, cars, drivers, and restaurants for lunches.

Here is where we held back one star. This relates to the planning of customized local tours. In the itinerary, all local tours were labeled as “VIP In-Depth Customized Tours”.

With such an exclusive and expensive custom tour for just two persons, we would have expected more detailed input, care, and recommendations as to what could be seen, as well as more details about important sites/activities at each location, including info on cost adjustments, if any, if additional spots were to be covered. In effect, for us, the tour company was the local travel expert and I would have expected them to provide us with options and allow us to make decisions after adequate expert input and guidance. This aspect could have been handled better.

Of note:

We don't know what we don't know. We are not experts on what the interesting/key spots are in each area and thus we expect the local travel company, with this expertise, to guide us and then let us decide. For instance, if a trip was being arranged for NYC, I would expect the local company to give the client a comprehensive rundown of all key spots, whether Ground Zero, the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, the UN, China Town, Central Park, the Rockefeller Center, Times Square, etc, as well as its world-class museums, rather than arranging a "standard tour" the planner assumes should suffice for most.

We have visited Italy before with a larger group and have experienced "standard" local tours that typically last three to three-and-a-half hours. The impetus for this customized trip was not to repeat such tours, with the only difference being that this time it would be for just two people instead of a group, with the ability to add value and have the opportunity to customize per our preference. Yet our personalized local tours this time were again typically three to three-and-a-half hours. When we enquired as to why some key spots at specific locations were not discussed (please see some specific examples below), the answer typically was, "This is our standard trip for most".

We think that at most of these locations this would have been the only chance in our lifetime to visit some key places, and if we could not do so on a very expensive customized tour, when could we?

Some examples of possibilities and options that were not discussed during the planning stage or included in the understanding/arrangement with the local guide, but became evident only after we reached a particular location, were:

Pompeii: Herculaneum or the amphitheater.

Siena: Only the outside of the Duomo was included, not inside, including the Piccolomini Library (the guide kindly obliged our requests).

Florence: The possibility of visiting the Uffizi Gallery, Pitti Palace, or Santa Croce church, etc, was not even presented or discussed.

Milan: That we wanted to visit the Duomo rooftop was specifically discussed, but never conveyed to the guide and therefore not included in the tour.

Venice: The possibility of visiting the Duomo (including the world-famous four bronze horses) was neither discussed nor included in the set tour, but again, the guide kindly obliged after fervent requests.

Also, when we discovered that some key spots were not included and contacted the agency with a request to see if some of these could be added, they were reluctant to help. An example of this was when we contacted them from Florence regarding the Uffizi Gallery and Pitti Palace. So we ended up having to arrange private tours to these additional sites ourselves through other agencies, and all within the time/days allotted to us in Florence.

Looking back, if we had not done what we did to fill in these "gaps", some of which are mentioned above, it would have been a big loss/miss.

Another item: Communication from the vendor to the driver regarding lunch was lacking in spots like Pompeii, Tuscany, and Lucca.

Another item: There were several places where "free time to explore on your own" was allotted. It would have been helpful if some guidance, suggestions, and tips regarding how to spend such free time could have been given to make this time more meaningful. For example, in Capri, etc.

Locations Visited: Venice, Verona, Florence, San Gimignano, Siena, Pienze, Rome, Pompeii, Positano

My husband and I planned this trip for our 10-year anniversary. I’m a person with high expectation and this travel agency exceeded all my expectations. The entire trip was dream.

We opted for personalized tours and transport for 95% of our trip. All of our drivers were wonderful. They arrived on time and made sure we made it to all of our destinations without issue. They had the contact information for the tour guides we were meeting. Upon arrival to our first hotel, a local cell phone and gift were given to us. Having the iPhone during our trip made any needed communication with our agent and his team a breeze. In addition, we used the phone apps for navigation throughout the cities we visited. We made a last-minute request for an additional private transport, and our agent was able to make it happen. We greatly appreciated their customer service.

We participated in a several unique experiences while in Italy. We went truffle hunting in Pienza, which was amazing. After, we were served a meal that highlighted truffles and the cheeses made locally. In addition, we did a cooking day in Rome. This was a private cooking class where we made pasta, several sauces, and appetizers. The one disappointment is that we never received the recipes from the chef (we were told by the chef that they would be emailed to us). However, this is a knock on the chef and not our travel agent. Once the class was done, we were served a meal in a private garden area. Lastly, we did a food walking tour in Rome. This was an amazing way to find local cuisine that we wouldn’t have known about otherwise. A wonderful experience.

All of our tour guides were excellent. They were knowledgeable, friendly, and familiar with the cities. We had one guide that really went into the details and reasons for expressions in the art. We didn’t care for that, but we didn’t specify that ahead of time or to the guide. It was wonderful seeing her excitement and passion for all of the amazing working works of art and sculpture that we saw.

Overall, I would highly recommend this travel agent and his team if you are traveling to Italy!! You will not be disappointed. We gave him our wish list of activities, accommodation preferences, etc. ahead of time and he made sure we got them all! Thank you for such a wonderful and memorable trip. If we are able to return to Italy, you will be hearing from us.

We booked a trip to Italy with this travel company.  We chose this travel specialist after interviewing a couple of different agencies.  We like to travel and explore places independently, with some private touring and guides that are flexible.

Our travel specialist listened carefully and came up with a plan that was more our style of traveling.   We chose from a few hotels in each area and he arranged for tours and when we had some last minute ideas, he was mostly able to accommodate us including a guide who got us into the Florence Academia to see the statue of David.   It would have been helpful to know about the need for advance tickets to get in there as well as the Duomo, something that would have been helpful in our travels.  

Our travel specialist set us up for a pasta cooking class which was in the chef's home with another family which was a fund night.  We had dinner and wine with the chef, his assistant and the other family and it was awesome.

We first went to Florence and stayed in a newly refurbished hotel, which was wonderful.  A guide took us the day we arrived to see the David and we had a wonderful first day.  Our second and third days were well planned with enough freedom to see the city on our own.   We were unable to see the Duomo because we were unaware of the need for advanced tickets as mentioned earlier.  We did see the Duomo in Sienna which was worth it so it kind of made up for what we missed in Florence.

We then went to Tuscany and stayed in a low key resort with a farm, animals where they made wine and grew olives.  It was in the town of San Gimigiarno, This was one of our travel specialist's recommendations and it was a good one.  We asked for advice on touring Tuscany and followed his advice as we visited a few towns.   He made sure we had a van for our luggage and getting our car in Florence was not a big deal.

We finished our three days and then dropped off the car and headed for Venice.   We had a problem on the train where apparently our ticket was cancelled as someone was sitting in our seat.   A tour guide we had in Venice suggested that the high speed trains sometimes do this to people, and it was not likely our agents fault.  After we paid for four new tickets, our travel specialist's staff received a copy of my receipt and said they would take care of it and reimburse us for it.  It all worked out ok and the train conductor found us a somewhat upgraded area in another car.

Got to Venice and our travel specialist arranged for our water transfer to and from the hotel which was nicely located.   We arranged through him to get tickets for Doges palace and for the basilica in advance.  This was after I had asked prior to leaving, since it is difficult to see these sites without advance purchase.  Our travel specialist had arranged for us to take a Gondola Ride the first day but we ended up going the second day due to scheduling.   The change was arranged by a woman he hired to give us a tour

The final day, we had cancelled a gondola rowing lesson since it was a little too touristy for our tastes and instead went to the Jewish ghetto that morning.  

In the afternoon, he set us up for a tour of Burano, Murano and Toriccello, three islands next to Venice. Personally, we would have preferred a more private tour of Burano and perhaps Toricello.  Burano is beautiful, Toricello is basically a park that has some older historical churches and buildings.  

Murano is home to the Murano glass factory and we were shuttled into a glass blowing demo and then their store, never really seeing the island. Alittle too touristy for us, would have preferred a more personal and less rushed experience.